Editor’s note: With this article Dr. Phil Corr begins a series on the matter that passionately motivated the early American republic Congregational missionaries: proclamation of Christ and Him crucified. At the heart of the efforts of these individuals and the American Board and local churches they served was the declaration that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior and that the offer of salvation is to be shared with people of all nations. The following material is drawn from Dr. Corr’s Ph.D. Dissertation, “ ‘The Field is the World‘: proclaiming, translating and serving by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1810-40.”
(c) 2008 Dr. Phil Corr
While Bible translation was a vital adjunct to Congregational missionary preaching, it was the proclamation of the Gospel that was a the forefront of those servants of the Lord who went forth to share God’s Word. And, while education, medicine and social concern were important in and of themselves as a partial fulfillment of the Great Commandment, the Great Commission from Jesus in Matthew 28 was paramount in all that they said and did.
With that understand, I want to jump right into a discussion of the types of preaching used by the early Congregational missionaries. The ways used to proclaim the Gospel were more varied than the languages used to communicate the message.
Daniel Poor in what is modern day Sri Lanka used various methods of preaching the Gospel, “principally in connection with the schools under my care.” The medium, or method of access he used to deliver the Gospel message varied depending on whether he was speaking to students or adults. Levi Spaulding and Winslow “pitched a tent; and at evening held a general meeting.” They followed up the tent meeting the next day by going house to house and conversing “with the people wherever we could find them.”
Throughout the period under consideration, street preaching was a popular method of prlaiming the gospel. The first missionaries preached in a manner “more or less public.” In 1833, the entire street preaching process is described. “The missionary goes out and commences a conversation with one or two, and soon others collect around him.” The address was tailored to the ever shifting audience. Twenty or thirty people listen at any one time, with approximately one hundred listening at some point during a half hour period. In contrast to such communicating methods as dialogue, the street preaching was often polemic in form.
Some missionaries drew up plans for preaching. Hall, Newell and Nott prepared “Thoughts on Various Methods of Advancing the Cause of Christ by Missionaries at Bombay.” A joint letter in the next decade shows continuity with the plan. “We still continue our usual method of addressing the Gospel to the people, by the way side, in the field, at their houses, and in their assemblies, as we meet with them on going out for the purpose daily. Besides this, we avail ourselves of opportunities, which we esteem suitable, of making regular appointments, in various places [and times]… according to our ability and the prospect of collecting the people.”
Winslow wrote that we “need traveling preachers to proclaim more extensively the glad tidings of salvation, but the plan of our mission has been rather to cultivate a little ground well, than to scatter our labor over a large surface of country.”
Winslow’s words addressed the subject of the value of preaching tours. Most Board missionaries were in favor of such a method. The Bombay group estimated very highly “the importance of itinerating extensively, for the double purpose of preaching, and distributing the Scriptures and tracts.” Reflecting on the completion of a preaching tour, Allen and Read wrote that they “have seen much which shows the importance of missionaries making tours, as intimately connected with the diffusion of Christian knowledge.” By contrast, Poor appeared to downplay the value of street preaching and preaching tours, likened it to sowing seed on a river. “To preach in bazaars, and in the high ways, to men with whom we have no acquaintance, and over whom we have no influence, but by whom we are regarded with deep rooted aversions, or with dread, is like sowing seed upon a mighty and rapid stream. It is barely possible that some grains may be washed to the river side and take root.”
As is the case today, people with the same goal of reaching people with Gospel can disagree on methods. In the next article in this series I will write about strategies and other matters related to types of preaching by the Congregational missionaries. May you be blessed and find some application in and through this historical information!
Phil Corr’s work on the web can be seen at: haystack06.org and fccofcc.com
